London

So I finally have the internet in my room here in London so I can catch up. Upon arriving in London, my luggage was lost by British Airways. So unfortunately I had to buy some clothes for two days. Meanwhile I have been here in London I have been able to visit most of the sites including, The Tower of London and Tower Bridge, Houses of Parliament, and attend a service at Westminister Abbey. It is quite a change of pace here taking the tubes to get around. It is extremely crammed here and we were living in a hostel for the first two weeks. That is four-six people in a room and between six rooms two bathrooms. Tough. Well London has been great and we have been able to meet with many companies here. They have been wining and dining us trying to get us to work for them. Our COSC program has a blog http://www.ukcosclaw.wordpress.com/. Check it out. Later this afternoon I will get to the stories of Italy. Oh and I got to see England versus the USA in a soccer match. Let's just say it was amazing! Oh and of course we lost 2-0. We didn't bring anyone good and they brought the house on us. haha. Oh my number if anyone needs to get a hold of me is 0750-354-9840. I am not sure the country code. It is my cell. Later

Ring Day

Well the day finally came: April 4, 2008! Well I guess this means that I am actually going to graduate, and only after 7 1/2 years. Hey I am getting my piece of paper, right. Well it was a good day with junky weather at first but now I have my bling. So I guess they should start hitting me up for money soon, huh.

Juwanna is Gone

So here is the story. It was 6:45 A.M., I was about a half/mile from work making a turn and never saw this truck which sideswiped me pretty good. I did a few spins, airbag never came out, and my car was totaled. No injuries. A little stiff on my right side of my back. Not the best way to start off a busy morning. Any questions just call me. Later.

FC Dallas

On Saturday I was able to go to a FC Dallas versus LA Galaxy charity fundraiser game. It was actually really cool. We were on the fourth row so we had pretty good seats. Pizza Hut Park is a really cool place. It is a big hole in the ground essentially. The first picture is of the field and the second is of David Beckham arguing with the side referee. Some yahoo always has to put his head in the way. For example the third picture has Beckham getting yellow carded like 15 feet in front of us. I forgot my camera again so I had to use my iphone. The last picture is of Landon Donavon yelling at the ref also. The game ended tied at 0-0. Our goalie made some incredible saves. Oh by the way, no sitings of Victoria. Darn.

Dried in already

I haven't been able to take pictures for a few days and we have been getting too much rain lately. So actually all the work between the last pics and these is about two days worth. They move pretty fast, especially when we are always fighting the rain. We have in the subdivision about 12 or 13 or homes in the construction process right now. That is still going up due to our saleslady who is going nuts selling homes. On my home they are scheduled to put in the HVAC system and start doing the electrical wiring throughout the house. Then I will need to get an inspection which won't pass the first time because they never do and then we will fix the things we need to and get ready to sheetrock. Then I will need an inspection. Does anyone see the one reoccuring thing? We have to have an inspection pretty much every phase. It's good but really slows us down and gets annoying when the inspectors are full of themselves and on power trips. Oh well.

Framed!

So when you have a break of two days that are good weather, or I should say better weather, this is what can get done on a house. However we are supposed to get more snow for two days and then it is going to warm up to the 70's again. This house was framed in a day and a half with a crew of 15 guys. They get it done quick. With the upcoming bad weather it is going to sit in this stage for 4 days probably.

Who would've thought

Snow in March. Reminded me of Utah but then I realized that probably by noon today it would all be melted and gone and by tomorrow it would probably be 80 degrees again. It was pretty cool though. However as you can imagine, not much can be done on a house that hasn't yet been framed.

Foundation

So here we are pouring the foundation a couple of days ago. On all our slabs we use stress cables. So running throughout the foundation are these long red plastic tubes that encase the stress cables. They are then attached to one side of the foundation. After the slab dries for 8 days they come and tighten the cables to 8000 PSI. Well we also use pump trucks to pump the concrete to all the sites. It is pretty cool. The black guy in the picture is controlling the pump hose with this remote control thing. Kinda like a toy race car or something.

Dallas Mavericks

The Mavericks at this point were pretty much beating the crap out of the Chicago Bulls.

This was the first home game with the newly reacquired Jason Kidd. He is pretty smooth with the passes. All these pictures were taken with my phone because I forgot my camera. When were leaving I snapped a quick photo of the open huge tv plaza area. By this time the temperature had dropped like 30 degrees and the wind was like 35 mph. Good game though.

Guitar Hero Dad

Dad was pretty focused on "Schools Out" by Alice Cooper.
Look elderly people can enjoy video games.
The best part is the next morning he woke up all excited about the game and felt like he was playing the guitar when he woke up. See everyone now there is something to do in Palestine.

Texas State Railroad

This last weekend we went to the Texas State Railroad to ride the train from Rusk to Palestine and back. It was really cool to see all the old stuff. However there definately was an age group that this was designed for: Either young kids or more elderly people. 24 is not really the age of focus. However it was fun and relaxing, a little slow but it got up to 25 mph. It was cool to have finally gone eventhough it has been there my whole life.

4-Wheelin & Skeet

Lets just say when I get on four-wheelers, I like to get wet and muddy. Also I spent a ton of time getting them all started for everyone. In the end we had four of them going on the trails. So as we are out muddin, I happen to go through a extremely deep puddle of at least three feet. The four-wheeler pulled through as it was almost completely under water. Shortly after that, it died. You can see in the background that we had to tow it back like 2 miles. As we were waiting for the others to return with a tow rope, Matt, Liz, Andrea, and I started to mud wrestle. Let's talk about muddy. But it was a blast. The rest of the night was filled with Angie's dad try to diagnose the broken four-wheeler over the phone. We also got some good skeet shooting in before the game wardens kicked us out of there. Apparently we were in a wildlife management area and need hunting licenses to skeet shoot. All in all it was a fun trip.

Broken Bow, OK

So here we are in the cabin up in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. It is pretty much the most random place to go but it was a lot of fun up there. The casino was just on the way to the cabin. The stairs went up to the infamous loft where Tanner and I had to sleep. It was great except the fact that if anyone talked in the living room it echoed on up the stairs so that got pretty annoying when I was trying to go to bed at 3:00 in the morning. Then on Saturday night I happened to stumble upon some lincoln logs. It started out as a small one room house and soon there were expansions going up left and right. This was the finished project, my ranch "La Hacienda." Yeah I know that is the name of restaurant but whatever. This is what I learned so far from Texas A&M with thousands of dollars and like six years of my life.

Casino

So as we are driving to Broken Bow Oklahoma to meet up with some friends at a cabin we happen to see the Choctaw Casino. Well in anyone knows Tanner he is super gay about poker and blackjack and gambling in general. Since I had never been and since Tanner's friends were already there we stopped in for like maybe an hour. So officially, slots suck. I left -20$, Andrea -10$, and Tanner +23$. It was fun eventhough we left smelling like a Marlboro factory.

Jazz Game

The Jazz actually won this game against the Trailblazers. But let me say that the Delta Center (Energy Solutions Arena or whatever gay thing it is called) was quite a disappointment. It just looked so old and ghetto eventhough it really isn't. It is just when you have a sweet American Airlines Center that the competition just can man up.

Temple Square

Well of course we visited temple square. Always a good place to go and relax. Once again very cold. This whole cold thing was starting to get old at this point. While we were in old chapel we were talking to one of the sisters and she was pretty cool. As we asked if we could go to other places that visitors can't, she proceeded to talk about how stiff her companion was and how she used to let people go everywhere until she got this new companion. It was pretty funny.